The buttons (things of use in this garment)
describe the figure and proportions of a large turbot. They consist of two
rows (leaving imagination to fill up a lapse of the absent), commencing,
to all appearance, at the _small of the back_, and reaching down even
to the hem of the garment, which is invariably a double-breasted one, made
upon the good old dining-out principle of leaving plenty of room in the
victualling department. To complete the catalogue of raiment, the
untalkaboutables have so little right to the name of drab, that it would
cause a controversy on the point. Perhaps nothing in life can more
exquisitely illustrate the Desdemona feeling of divided duty, than the
portion of manufactured calf-skin appropriated to the peripatetic purposes
of these gentry; they are, in point of fact, invariably that description
of mud-markers known in the purlieus of Liecester-square, and at
all denominations of "boots"--great, little, red, and yellow--as
eight-and-sixpenny Bluchers. But the afore-mentioned drabs are strapped
down with such pertinacity as to leave the observer in extreme doubt
whether the Prussian hero of that name is their legitimate sponsor, or the
glorious Wellington of our own sea-girt isle.
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